Using Opposing Viewpoints Resource
Center
(OVRC): Advanced
Basic Search Tips if the Issue You Want to
Research is Not on the List:
- Completing the following steps may help you get to get started:
- Determine what you are looking for by stating it in a sentence. Example:
"I am writing a paper about women in the work place."
- Type key words, ideas, or concepts about the idea. Some key words for
the above topic are: women, work place, equal rights, equal pay, employment,
glass ceiling.
- Combine terms with and, or, not to get the precise
information you need. Examples: women and employment; women
and equal pay or equal rights; women
and employment not military.
- Follow the OVRC
Search Tips to search for variants or other forms of a term
(technique called Truncation (Wildcard) Characters). Example: type wom?n to find citations containing
the terms woman or women.
- Choose from the drop down menu to the right of the dialogue box to search
for your term in the Subject, Keywords or Full-Text of
the resources. Searching in the Subject will bring up the fewest
results. Searching in Keywords will bring up more results, and
searching in Full-Text will bring up the most.
- Click Help or Search Tips at the top of any screen for online assistance
or ask a Reference Librarian.
Tips for the Advanced Search if You want to Combine Issues, Limit Your
Results to a Specific Time Period, or Search by Document Type:
- Click on the Advanced Search button to the right of the Basic
Search box.
- Use the multiple dialogue boxes to enter more than one issue to search
them together. Note: You can also search for specific Authors or Sources by
changing the drop down menus to the right.
- Use the drop down menus under Date of Publication to limit your
search to newspaper and journal article from a specific time period.
Note: Limiting the dates for your search will also limit your results so that
only newspaper and journal articles are included.
- Use the Document Type drop down menu to choose to only search for
one type of resource. The list includes: Image, Website Listing, Primary
Document, and Statistical Table. If you do not limit by document type,
your search results will still be organized by document type and therefore
very easy to browse.
- On the Advanced Search screen you can also increase the number of
results listed on each screen. This can be helpful when you want to look
through the entire results list and you don't want to have to keep changing
the page.
For additional search hints, see our general Advanced
Search Tips.
Mark/Select Multiple Results
- Click inside box next to items you want to look at more closely (or click
Select all items on this page).
- Before moving to the next page, click Update Mark List.
- When finished marking
items, click View Mark List.
Return to Using
OVRC
Return to Online
Databases